


Sons & Daughters

by themonkeycabal



Series: Run 'Verse [27]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Stark Family Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 15:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7059361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themonkeycabal/pseuds/themonkeycabal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Darcy have a long overdue conversation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sons & Daughters

"Torque this," Tony muttered to a recalcitrant, mechanical leg and set the soldering gun down. 

"Talking to yourself? Not a good sign," Darcy said behind him. 

He spun on his chair and grinned at his daughter. Whipping off his goggles, he ran his eyes over her in a quick evaluation. She was still pale, but her eyes were clear for the first time in two weeks. 

The day of the attack, Jarvis alerted him to the situation before the alarms even sounded. He'd just opened his mouth to order Jarvis to lock down and alert the others when his AI added that Darcy'd been in the lobby as well. He ran like hell, not waiting for his armor to fully assemble around him before he dove off the balcony. He hit the ground, pushed his way through the handful of confused bystanders, and stepped into an eerily calm, empty lobby. His security had cleared people out immediately. Jane Foster was on one side, held back by a guard, shouting for Darcy. 

He ignored Jarvis's warning to avoid the low, hazy fog of light coming from the large cardboard box by the front doors, and dropped to his knees next to his daughter sprawled on the marble floor. She moved, she twitched, she jerked and groaned and then rolled to her side and started vomiting. He ordered his armor to retract and he slid out to take her into his arms. For a second he thought she was convulsing, but then she turned back and fought him like a hellcat. She was lost in insensibility. 

Thor turned up a few seconds later and between the pair of them they were able to control her enough to get her to the elevator. Tony thought about just flying her up, but he didn't know what happened and didn't want to put her body through more stress. And damn it, the last thing he wanted was to use his armor on his own kid, even just to get her to hold still. 

Foster gave a breathless recitation of events all the way to the medical bay, where Bruce was waiting. Steve came and went, dragging Clint and Natasha with him as they headed out Hydra hunting. He let them. As much as he wanted to dive back off the balcony and find the fuckers who hurt his daughter, she needed him more. She needed him to be there through those 61 hours of waiting. 61 hours of Darcy being non-responsive. 61 hours of scans and tests and horrible gnawing desperation. 

He felt those sharp claws of desperation twist in his chest again, but he took a breath and ignored them as well as he could. "Hey, kid."

"What are you working on?" she asked as she wandered into his workshop. 

"My Iron Legion," he said, trying to sound upbeat and not haunted. 

She laughed a little and shook her head. "God, you have to stop naming things."

"I thought it was perfect."

"I guess," she said, sounding dubious. "In a creepy, megalomaniac with his own robot army sort of way."

He pouted at her and grumbled, "They're not a robot army. They're like robot traffic cops. We'll deploy them to set a perimeter to keep civilians clear of any sort of fight."

Darcy gave him a contrite smile and walked over to pat his shoulder. "Good idea."

"Thank you."

"And what's this?" She poked at a monitor and the lines of code there. 

He shifted in his chair and considered the code. "Something else I'm working on. Missing a little something, though."

"Need help?"

"Nah, not right now. I'll let you know." 

"You've been working on this for a while," she murmured and leaned closer. "Kind of looks like Jarvis's code."

"A little bit," he replied, evasive and not quite ready to talk about the Ultron project. "So, what's up?"

She straightened up and chewed on her lower lip for a second before pulling a couple sheets of paper out of her pocket. "I got a letter from Howard."

Tony blinked at that. Howard? "What's it say?"

"That he loves us."

Frowning, Tony sat back in his chair and considered his daughter. In the two weeks since the attack she'd been distant and quiet. Withdrawn. When the sixty-one hours passed and she woke, she was _different_. Nothing profound, and Bruce said there weren't any signs of neurological trauma, but it was enough to worry them all. She wouldn't talk about what happened, she only insisted, stridently and desperately, that the machine used in the attack be destroyed. 

Tony did as she asked, taking the device apart, gutting it and breaking it down to disconnected parts, until there was no chance of it working. But he studied it, too, and that was enough for him to develop a theory. 

He'd watched the security footage from the lobby that day in his search for answers, and he calculated that from the moment of the attack to the instant he got to her, 21 seconds had passed. Six seconds after the light started leaking out of the box, engulfing Darcy, she vanished from the security footage, only to be visible again 8 seconds later. He arrived seven seconds after that. It wasn't visibly obvious from the recordings what happened, but in those 8 seconds she'd undergone a wardrobe change — the clothes were destroyed, but their texture, their make was obvious. A cream blouse instead of red, dark blue pants instead of beat-up blue jeans. And her hair was shorter, pulled back into a complicated twist, bun thing. 

It all suggested to him that she'd gone somewhere in the eight seconds she vanished from the lobby. Some _when_. Bruce looked at him like he was crazy when he presented his theory. 

But, now she had a letter from Howard?

"Are you sure it's from Howard?" Tony asked with a thin smile. 

"Yes," she said simply and offered him the letter. "I'm ready to talk about what happened now. But, you should read that first."

Tony eyed her and took the sheets, looking away long enough to glance down at the typed pages and his father's familiar signature at the bottom. "1948," he read quietly. "I thought that's what happened. Your hair was different. I don't think anybody else bought it."

"I can't blame them," she said with a shrug. "Read the letter, dad."

He read through the missive then closed his eyes and let out a long breath. That twinge of desperation turning into one of grief, and even maybe envy. She'd gotten to know Howard in a way he never would. His father said words to her, that he never had to Tony. But, he was glad, too. Emotions were so damned confusing. But, he truly was glad that somebody was there for her and just as well it was her grandfather. 

"Finally," he said after a moment, opening his eyes and smiling at her, "something dad and I agree on."

Quirking her head with a puzzled frown, she asked, "What's that?"

"That you're amazing." He tossed the letter on the table and stood up to pull her into a tight hug. Fear and relief warred inside him and he just needed to hold his kid for a second. Just a second. To know and feel that she was really there with him. Not lost to some damned Hydra attack or lost to time. 

"Love you, dad," she said quietly, squeezing him back. 

"I love you, too, kid," he muttered into her hair. "Howard wasn't ever big on actually saying the words out loud was he?"

"No, he sucked at it." She pulled back a little to look him in the eye. "I'm sorry I couldn't save him."

"Ah, Darcy," he sighed and gave her a little shake. "I'll agree with him about that, too; that wasn't your deal. You should write this down; me and Howard agreeing twice in one day. It's unprecedented."

She smiled and nodded. "Still. I'm sorry."

"Well, I'm sorry you got stuck with him for however long it was," he told her with a wry smirk. 

"Three months. September 19th, 1946 to December 28th."

"Jesus, how did you survive?" 

She looked hesitant before she said, "He wasn't that bad. And I had Jarvis and Peggy, too."

He brightened at that. "How'd you like Jarvis?"

She offered him her own bright smile in return. "I loved him."

"Finally get your hug?" he asked, raising his eyebrow in a knowing look. 

"First thing I did when I saw him," she assured him with a snicker. "Kind of freaked him out."

Tony laughed and slid his arm around her shoulder, tugging her into his side. "I bet you liked Peggy, too. When you met her when you were a kid you didn't stop talking about her for months."

"She was great," Darcy agreed. "I think I kind of drove her nuts a few times, but she didn't strangle me, so, win." She took a breath and leaned into his side. "She waited for me for all those years, dad. When you took me to meet her, she'd been waiting." 

Tony chewed on that for a second, processed the long march of time from 1946 to today. "You went and saw her didn't you? When you went to DC last week?" 

A few days after she woke and after Bruce gave her a clean bill, she announced she had to go to DC for something. Though she didn't say it, she'd very vaguely implied that it was for SHIELD; he knew something was going on with her and Coulson, but not what exactly. His first instinct was to call Coulson and yell at him for sending Darcy out so soon after the attack, and his second instinct was to put on his armor and go yell at Coulson in person. But, she promised it was only something she had to take care of. Then he demanded she let him come along, but she'd refused, and before he could marshall an argument she looked up at him with those big gray eyes and said, 'please, dad'. He crumbled. Then he spent the day fidgeting, pacing, and driving everybody else up the wall, until she got home. 

"Yeah," Darcy admitted, looking abashed. "I promised her."

He snapped his fingers. "See? I knew it wasn't a thing for Coulson."

"No, Phil's benched me until I send him a report that makes him happy." Clearing her throat, she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Sorry I lied about that."

"It's alright, Darce." They had an agreement to be honest with each other, but he understood all too well about needing time to deal with things yourself. "So you got along with Howard okay?"

"Yeah. I, uh …" She trailed off and looked uncertain, like she was afraid of saying the wrong thing. She was his daughter, and he knew her well enough to read the thought behind that. His father was and always had been a minefield for Tony, but if only one of them could have a decent relationship with Howard he was happy it was her. At least his father didn't disappoint him in that.

"You can say you liked him," Tony told her. "It's not like some weird betrayal or something to actually like your grandfather."

"I did," she said quietly. "I loved him."

"Good."

"Really?" She scrunched up her face and looked unsure and a touch skeptical. 

"Yes, really," he insisted with a roll of his eyes. "Do you think I wanted you to hate him?"

"Well, no," she admitted. "But he's always been sort of a touchy subject. And I get why."

"We didn't understand each other. Like _ever_ ," Tony said. "But, you needed him and he was there for you. So, I say again, good."

"Okay." She nodded, accepting that. "So, that box he mentioned in the letter? I guess it sort of turned into a warehouse, because, God, of course it did. Stark overkill."

"Cool." Tony smirked and waggled his eyebrows at her. "What's in it?"

"No idea. Want to go with me to find out?"

And somehow that simple question mended something in Tony. An adventure, just the two of them and nobody else. God, he'd missed that and hadn't realized how much until that moment. It sucked having to share her with everybody else; he always had been a selfish man. 

He grinned and steered her towards the door. "Let's do it."

She jerked a thumb back at his workstation. "You're not busy?" 

"It'll keep." He led her out of the lab and towards the elevator. The doors opened before he could call the car, and Steve stepped out. 

"Hey, Darcy," the other man greeted. "I've been looking for you."

Darcy smiled at him, but Tony thought it looked a little tight. Oh. 1946. Shit. She left Rogers in the ice. God, kid, what did you do to yourself? Privately he thought his dad had to have been right about that, too, about the strength it would take to face the past. Tony wasn't sure he could have done it, either. 

"What's up, Steve?" She asked with that tight smile still in place. 

"The Director called. He's still looking for your report."

Raising one eyebrow, she gave him a sharp look. "You mean you called Phil and badgered him to badger me some more?"

Steve looked concerned and irritated. His jaw firmed up and Tony snorted softly. Darcy would be immune to the clenched jaw of righteousness. He was proud of Darcy for a huge number of reasons, but her refusal to be intimidated by anything had to be near the top of the list. Even when it kind of scared the shit out of him. Like when she sat down with murdering assassins. 

Though, maybe shaking off her funk would mean Barnes would finally stop haunting the neighborhood, because him being that close made Tony itchy. Though he'd moved out of the lobby, at least, and he had to admit that after the guy caught up to one of the Hydra attackers and nearly beat the man to death, Tony was feeling a little warmer towards him. Kind of. 

"We're worried," Steve said. "You need to talk to somebody."

"I'm talking to my dad," she said with a wave of her hand at Tony. "Look, Steve, we've gotta run."

"Director Coulson—"

"Can cool his heels," she said. But, of course, stubborn as she was, she was also nicer than her dear old dad, and she gave Steve a warmer, more sincere smile, though Tony didn't miss the way she wouldn't meet his eyes. "I'll talk to him. But dad and I have to do something first."

"Later, Rogers." Tony gave him a smug look, and thumped him on the shoulder as he and Darcy got into the elevator, while Steve stared after them with a furrowed brow. 

Darcy didn't share as much with him as she used to, and Tony had been feeling left out, he supposed. She was grown up now and had her own, weird life, but still, she was his daughter and they'd always had a relationship he'd treasured. Recently, it felt like that relationship was a little frayed, so her coming to him first was a hell of a present. Yeah, he'd be smug about it if he wanted and Cap could look like a kicked puppy all he wanted. 

However, when the doors closed and the elevator started moving, Tony sighed as the still strange caring-about-other-people's-feelings thing washed over him, ruining that bubble of smug satisfaction. "You're going to have to put Cap out of his misery."

"I know," she grumbled. "That conversation is going to suck."

"Well, then, Jesus, send him on an mission or something," he pleaded. "I can't stand another week of mopey Rogers."

"I spent three months with Peggy Carter. I let her think Steve was dead," she retorted, a sharp bite in her tone.

"You did what you had to," Tony said firmly. He also didn't want another week of mopey Darcy, but that was less because it would aggravate him, and more because it would rip his heart out. "Besides, you couldn't change anything, could you?"

"No, I guess not," she said in a small voice, drifting back to that distant year. "Howard and I argued about that a lot. He thought today is what it is because I was in 1946. So, like, if I changed anything, it didn't really change today because I always changed things in 1946. And, I guess he was right. Everything's still where I left it." She groaned and rubbed at her forehead. "I never want to time travel again. It sucks."

"Noted."

"Trust me. Don't get tempted," Darcy warned. "It blows."

"Gotcha, kid," he assured her. Yeah, he didn't think he was anywhere near strong enough to let things that had to happen just happen, like leaving Cap in the ice until he was needed today. Christ, that must have ripped her to shreds. He would have wanted to meddle, to try and fix things, and he probably would have made them worse. Wasn't that always the warning about time travel? Butterflies and all that crap. 

"We took the machine apart," he said. "I'm still going over it; if we come across another one I want to know what we're dealing with. But, I promise you, that one's not going to be doing anything again."

"Good. We never did figure out exactly what happened. We just sort of replicated the event and hoped for the best." She grimaced. "I realize that could have been bad, but we felt like we had a good lock on it."

Tony shrugged easily. "Eh, you and dad were on it. And if it was three months, then you guys took your time, didn't rush into it or anything."

"Oh, well," she cleared her throat and looked up at the ceiling, "half of that was because the unit was stolen and we had to find it first."

"Stolen?" He echoed, his eyebrows raising. Nothing was ever easy, was it?

"Yeah, it's a wacky tale."

The elevator stopped in the garage and he nudged her to his car. "Okay, so lay it out, Darce. Tell me everything."

And she did. Over the drive out to Queens Darcy told him the whole, wild story. From waking up in the camp hospital to that last day when she said her goodbyes. Tony thought there were a couple things she was glossing over, but he didn't get a sense of any huge, gaping holes in her story. The situation took its toll on her emotionally, and dealing with that sort of thing was never a great strength of his. He'd talk it out if that's what she needed, but it would be up to her to decide, and if she needed to keep some things to herself, then he wasn't going to bitch about it. 

"So, basically, you're telling me you founded SHIELD?" he asked with a laugh as she wrapped up her story and he guided the car off the expressway into Queens. 

She frowned at that and cocked her head, looking like she hadn't even considered that. "No. I mean, not really. Not _founded_."

"Not really?" He said with a disbelieving smile. "You just said you spent three months talking about it with Howard."

"That's not the same thing as founding it," she argued back. "Sure, I was there at the beginning. But again, that's not founding."

"Right, sure, sure. If I know you — and, you know, being your dad, I do know you — you spent three months telling Howard what it needed to be."

"Well, if I did, it went wrong somewhere," she groused, a sour frown on her face.

"Entropy. It happens," Tony said, shrugging at that one immutable truth that not even entropy could change. 

She ignored him and continued, "And I couldn't do anything about that whole Hydra mess, either."

He scoffed. "What were you going to do? You find one of them, and what about the other hundred or thousand?"

"No, no, I know. Believe me, I know," she said on a long breath and stared out the window. "I played out every scenario every way I could think." 

Nodding slowly, Tony glanced at his daughter out of the corner of his eye. Darcy had a big brain. She didn't think she did, but she was smarter than him in a dozen different ways. He wondered if it was his fault that she never realized that. 

Tech was splashy and garnered attention, and it was what he understood best, so of course he shared that with his kid. He didn't know how not to, and she was no slouch when it came to engineering. But did that singular focus on technology mean she never realized that his gift for machines and code took a new form in her? Did she think that her own gifts were secondary or lesser to his? 

He could see the long lines of the technological future stretching out from the present, but Darcy could read the future in ways he couldn't; she read it in people and how and what they were or could be. He could see the tech, but she could see what would be done with it. They were a pretty great team, to be honest. 

If Darcy looked at 1946 and ran the next seven decades through her head, then she'd seen everything there was to see, every branch, every twist, every quirk of causality. As far as he was concerned, there was nobody who could have seen it better than her. 

"Then you already know that you did the right thing," he said, absolute in his certainty. "Besides, Howard was right about that, too; those years weren't yours to fix." He made an exasperated noise and shook his head. "Jesus, look at what you did. I've never agreed with Howard this much in my entire life."

She snorted a laugh and pointed out a turn at the next intersection. "Maybe this _is_ an alternate reality — you and Howard on the same page about anything."

"Nah, it's just you. Stubborn, thinking you've got to make everything right. No way he missed that."

"Says Iron Man, son of the guy who thought he ought to build a top secret spy agency," she said dryly. 

"Guess you come by it honestly." He checked the address on the GPS and peered down the block. The warehouse should be coming up on their left. "Anyway, I say again, you founded SHIELD."

"Ugh," she grunted. "Does it really matter, anyway? Like, I wasn't on the great wall of founders or anything."

"Uh, yeah, kind of matters. Aren't you the one who's going to rebuild it?"

"Don't get me wrong, I'm way intent on cleaning this shit up," she said. "But Phil's the guy."

"Bullshit," Tony shot back, grinding his teeth at her endless intransigence on this subject. 

She was diving head first into the whole mess, resolved and dogged in her belief that SHIELD needed to be rebuilt the right way. For the last two weeks, when she wasn't helping Foster prepare for their trip to London, she'd been holed up in her office hammering out the details of the SHIELD base she was freaking building. Darcy was driven in her goal of setting the pieces in place for her big play; the one that would give her the weight to have a voice in the room. How did she not see what she was doing? Christ, he was proud of her.

Tony continued, pressing his point, "He's working off the old book. The one entropy made swiss cheese out of. You can't rebuild on a foundation that's rotting."

"Yeah, I know. I've seen it up close over the last week," she admitted and then she laughed. "I told Peggy fire was cleansing."

"There you go." He saw the long, two-story brick building the GPS said was their target, and slowed to turn into the driveway to one side. "You were there, you know what it was supposed to be, so start fresh."

"Easier said than done." She leaned forward in her seat and looked up at the building. "That's not a warehouse."

"Anything's a warehouse if you cram enough shit into it," Tony observed philosophically. 

"What was this? Like a car dealership or something?" She laughed and shook her head. "Geez, it's almost like coming home." 

There were a string of high, arched bays along the front of the building, the doors that would have gone in them had been replaced at some point by divided-light windows, long since painted over themselves. On the second story there was a faded sign on the brick — he could just make out 'McNulty and Sons', but the words below that were lost to time. 

In the back, the driveway opened into a fenced in parking lot and he stopped the car alongside a single story addition with a pair of garage doors and a loading ramp. 

"Car dealership, or auto shop," Tony agreed as he turned off the car. 

Darcy reached for her bag and pulled it into her lap, digging out a manilla envelope. She opened it and shook a set of keys into her hand, then pulled out a packet of papers. "Built in the twenties. Howard bought it in '68," she said, reading through the deed. 

Tony bit at his upper lip. The year before he was born, or, he supposed, depending on when Howard bought it, his mom could have been pregnant at the time. Howard was preparing for his granddaughter even as he was preparing for his son. Tony wasn't sure how he felt about that. It was kind of comforting and kind of uncomfortable at the same time. 

"Did he put it in your name?" he asked. "That would be weird."

"No," she said shaking her head. "He left it in a trust with Leo, to be given to his oldest granddaughter yesterday. It's been on the calendar since before I was born. Veronica was pretty confused when she called me. There was a fund attached to it, too, for maintenance and whatever." 

Veronica Garvey-Carmine was the daughter of Howard's friend and lawyer Leo Garvey. She followed her father into law, then took over his practice and the management of Darcy's trust when Leo died six years earlier. She was one of the handful of people who'd always known who, exactly, Darcy was. The Garveys had been as close a thing to family as the Starks had when Darcy was growing up. Well, and Obie, but Tony didn't like the look Darcy got in her eye when his name was mentioned. She looked like Bruce right before he turned green. It was a humbling and awful thing to see that sort of rage in your child's eyes.

"How's V doing?" Tony asked. 

"Good."

"We should, like, invite her to dinner or something soon, huh?"

"That would be nice. Rick got called up to the Mets this year. Did I tell you that?"

"Oh yeah? Good for him," Tony said with a smile, trying to sound interested. Rick was Veronica's youngest, he was about Darcy's age, but aside from Darcy, Tony and kids had never mixed well. 

Darcy laughed. "Veronica hates baseball, but she's so proud. She's got Mets stuff all over her office now."

"He was always a good kid. I mean, obnoxious, you know, but good." He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "Do we have season tickets?"

"The company does. Clint and I went to a couple games earlier in the year." 

He chewed on his mustache and shot her a subtle side glance and said carefully, "We should go sometime. See him."

"That'd be great," she said, giving him a sincere smile. 

He grinned at her and opened the car door. 

For obvious reasons, they didn't go out in public together very often; Darcy was always terrified of getting the media's attention. When she was a kid, they'd go out and he'd get creative with some disguises, but they were still limited in the things they could do together, and sporting events tended to be one of the things that were a no-go — too long in one place with too many people around who might see beyond the disguise. Tony wasn't a particular fan of team sports, but Darcy loved them. And maybe she was grown up now, but there was a dad part of him that just wanted to take his kid to a ball game. 

Pepper told him she thought Darcy was getting closer to coming out as a Stark, but that he needed to give her a little more space and time. But, if Darcy was willing to go to a game with him, then maybe she was closer than even Pepper suspected. Still, he wasn't in a hurry to push her. He'd love to show everybody his kid, to show them how amazing and beautiful she is; he'd love to present her to the gaping press and crow about his genius partner-in-crime. Mostly, he wanted to tell the world all about his most magnificent creation. However, unlike him, Darcy was an extremely private person, and no force on Earth would make him subject her to the stress of endless media scrutiny when she wasn't ready for it. 

"I think I'm scared," Darcy said. 

Tony blinked, and for a confused second wondered if she was reading his mind or some crap. 

He looked back over at her, watching as she climbed out of the car. "What?"

She smirked at him. "I have no idea what's in there. If Howard left me seventy years of junk, I'm going to have to go back in time to strangle him. Thus, undoing my own existence. And yours, too. Sorry."

Chuckling, he held his hand out. "Give me the keys and toughen up, kid."

She tossed him the keyring, but continued to hover by the car while he walked up to the service door and the string of four bolt locks. He stared at the keypad next to the door. "Is there a passcode?"

"Oh," Darcy dug back into the folder and came up with an index card. "56342536."

Tony snorted and shook his head — he knew his dad, that code had to be some actress's figure — then he threw the locks then hit the code into the pad. There was a heavy thunk of a magnetic lock releasing, and he tested the knob and pushed the door open. "We'll want to update that."

"Noted," she said, digging her phone out of her pocket and actually making the note. 

Entering the building, Tony was hit by the smell of dust and lemon floor polish. Nothing smelled mildewed or rotten, so he supposed the maintenance fund actually paid for decent maintenance. He wondered if Leo'd kept watch over the building for all those years. 

He found the light switches and turned them on, revealing a long, narrow room full of crates and a couple dust-cloth covered shapes that looked like cars. He turned around to comment to Darcy but couldn't see her. Walking back to the door, he stuck his head out to find her still by the car.

"Hey, chicken, come on," he called. "It's not that bad."

"It's two stories."

"It's like, maybe five thousand square feet all together. If that. Maybe another thousand with the garage. Looks bigger from the outside. Come on."

She bit her lip and looked down at the papers in her hands. "Yeah, okay, you're right — 4800 and the garage."

"There are two cars in here, Darce," he cajoled, trying to entice her into moving her ass. It didn't work. "Seriously, what is your deal?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's fine. I just, you know, got a taste of Howard's excess." She crammed the papers into her bag and stumped up to follow him back into the building. 

"Christ, kid, you're rich as Croesus. He also left us a company and left you a spy agency. Why's the old car dealership in Queens wigging you out?"

"I don't know," she grumbled.

He raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

She shrugged and stepped into the room, looking around. "I guess it makes it real," she said in a low voice. 

"That you met him?"

"Yeah. I mean, the first couple weeks it was all some weird, surreal thing, like a bizarre dream. And then I got used to stuff, and then, you know, I had to leave. And it was back to being a dream."

He wasn't entirely sure what to say to that, so he put his hand on her shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. "Well, hey, look, I'm glad you got to know him. I know that we knew him at different points, but, you know, thinking about it, it's kind of cool. Now when I bitch about him, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about."

She laughed and gave him a gentle nudge in his side. "I was digging through SHIELD's rules and regs this week, just sorting through it all. He named one after me."

"Seriously?" Tony asked with a laugh. 

"The Lewis clause. It governs the relationships between partners. It drove him nuts I wouldn't tell him about my partner." With a sharp laugh, she shook her head. "He could be such a jackass sometimes."

"Agreed," Tony said, feeling stiff and having to force his own chuckle. He was trying, he really was, but he wasn't sure Barnes would ever sit right with him. 

Fuck, what a circular mess this whole thing was. Nobody tried to pretend Barnes hadn't staged the accident that killed his parents, despite a lack of evidence, and some days he wanted to pound the guy into the pavement. But then the asshole went and did things like track his daughter down in China and watch her back in shootouts in Minnesota. And somehow it still all came back to Howard. To Howard and Darcy in 1946 it looked like. No wonder her head was such a disaster with all this. It was amazing she'd made it this far in two weeks. Yep, he was still insanely proud of her.

"Relax. Mostly I was screwing with him," she murmured, wrapping her arm around his and giving it a quick hug. "Look! Crates." She let him go and reached into her bag and pulled out a crowbar. An honest to God crowbar.

Tony hooked a finger around the strap of her messenger bag and leaned down to peer inside. "What the hell do you have in here?" 

"Well, I figured there'd be crates," she said as if that explained anything. 

"How do you walk?"

She looked down at the crowbar and hefted it, then shrugged. "It's a small one."

Laughing, he bent forward and kissed her temple then ruffled her hair. "You are an endless delight, Darce."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Thanks?"

"Let's get moving," he said, clapping his hands together before snatching the crowbar out of her hand. 

Darcy headed for the cars, and Tony followed just as eagerly. They slid the tarp off the first, revealing a curvy, open two-seater sports car in rich racing green.

"What is this? Is it an Aston Martin?" Darcy asked, peering down into the driver's compartment.

"This, sweetheart, is proof that dad loved you more than me." Tony ran a reverent hand over the sleek lines of the car. "This is a 1948 Aston Martin DB1."

She laughed and quirked an eyebrow at him. "Want it?"

"No, it's yours, but I insist you let me drive it." 

"Done," she said easily and started to pull the tarp back over it, but Tony continued to examine the vehicle.

"I've got a picture somewhere of Howard in this," he said. "I always wondered what happened to it."

"A warehouse in Queens. Always the last place you look." She dropped the tarp when he didn't move to help her and walked over to the second car. "By they way, he did not love me more. You read the letter."

"Yeah, he did," Tony protested. Yes, he'd read the letter, but that was written before he'd been born to be a disappointment. Though, it did make him wonder what Darcy might have told Howard about him. Maybe … well, maybe Howard was proud of him. Proud of the man he'd become, the man Darcy knew. Maybe. 

Not really liking the heavy thoughts, he waved at the car again. "You know there were like six of these ever made?"

"Maybe he just thought I'd like a sporty little coup." She waved a hand at him. "You can drool over it all you want. Later. Next."

The second car was an equally sporty but less rare silver 1961 Jaguar E-type. Darcy was appreciative, but in the course of pulling off the tarp, they'd discovered three motorcycles on the other side of the cars, and Darcy fell in love. Tony couldn't get a clear look at them — the first one was a Norton, the second looked like it might be a Triumph, but he couldn't see the third, parked up against the wall behind the other two. 

Looked like Howard went through a British engineering phase, which was funny because he and David Brown at Aston Martin had carried on a multi-decade rivalry which had been historic (there'd been books written on the subject), epic, and swung from jovial to vicious and back again. Tony wondered if Brown sent Howard the DB1 to tweak him, and what his father's response might have been. 

"I told him he gave me a bike," Darcy said, running a hand over the Norton's leather seat. "He kept asking questions I couldn't answer. I said he gave me Steve's bike."

"Well, he did, in a way," Tony said. "Maybe that's why he had it in storage forever."

"Maybe." She thought about it for a second and breathed out a light laugh. "Probably."

"Okay, and _you_ can drool over those later," he repeated her earlier comment with a laugh. "We've got sixty years of crates to crack."

Darcy looked up from the bike and glanced back across the room at the boxes on boxes of boxes and groaned. "What am I going to do with all this crap?"

"Good thing you have a warehouse." Tony said and started prying free the lid of the nearest crate. 

For two hours they opened every box on the first floor. They found files, they found parts, they found machines. Three crates were treasure-troves of Howard's earliest designs and prototypes; items that never saw the light of day. Tony could spend weeks on those crates alone. 

Behind the mass of crates was a heavy set of shelves taking up fully half the length of the building, and weighed down with neat rows of locked, metal fire-boxes. Darcy frowned at the boxes for a moment then went back to her bag of mystery and pulled out the manila envelope and dug through it until she came up with a fat, plastic bag. Opening it, she dumped dozens of small keys onto a shelf and sighed. 

"I'll call for lunch," Tony told her, eyeing the line of boxes and the pile of keys. Unlabeled keys, he noticed. Thanks, Howard.

They tested the keys, one at a time on each box, and Darcy's absurd bag of tricks magicked them up a Sharpie and a roll of duct tape allowing them to label as they went. 

The first box contained eight additional letters from Howard — two for Darcy and six for Tony. They stared at the envelopes, their names scrawled across them in Howard's hand, then exchanged a look. Darcy plucked his from his fingers and stuffed the whole packet into her bag. Below the envelopes were packs and packs of photographs. They set those aside, too, to peruse over lunch. Then they moved on.

The second box contained an intricately carved ebony box. Darcy opened it and laughed. Pulling out items, she showed them to Tony, and told him about these particular treasures. Hers all along, kept safe by Howard for decades. A hardback journal — "My report from 1946. I'll give it to Phil. Make him less cranky. You can read it first, though." A book of poetry and scarf from Jarvis — "I caught a flipping cold. He got fussy." A little handkerchief and a playbill from Peggy's old friend Angie — "Most authentic fake scream I've ever heard in my life." The Captain America magazine signed by Peggy Carter made him laugh — "I think I'll get it framed and give it to Phil. I'll be sure and take a picture of his face for you". And at the bottom, two jewelry boxes. 

The smaller box she handed him first. "Howard's Christmas present. They're nice."

And they were. Diamond and garnet earrings. A little fancier than anything Darcy generally wore, but they had an elegant feel without being ostentatious. Who knew his dad could manage that? He'd bet they'd look great on her. "Definitely nice. You're going to have to stop dodging all the fundraisers and crap so you can wear them out."

"I can wear them without going to fundraisers," she pointed out. 

Tony laughed and handed back the box. "You're going to be kicking around in your sweats, wearing the fancy diamond earrings?"

"I would rock the hell out of that ensemble," she told him with a lofty sniff. Then she handed him the necklace box. "My birthday present."

Tony opened the case and let out a low whistle. Platinum with diamonds and a large pearl. He poked at the links, considering them. French nouveau-inspired art deco. 1930s maybe. Unique and exotic, just like Darcy. "Dad had great taste," he said simply. 

She made a face and shrugged. "Sometimes. All the portraits of him were kind of tacky, though. I mean, you got used to them, but seriously."

Frowning, Tony slipped the necklace back into the ebony box. "Portraits?"

"Did he not have a picture of himself in every room when you were growing up? Because, if not, let me tell you, lucky you."

Tony stared at her for a moment, baffled. "Dad did what?"

"Every room," Darcy said with a nod on each word. 

He felt like he might be gaping at her, but he was trying really hard to picture this. The image he had of his dad was of a stern, uptight businessman. Of course, that image was colored by years of misunderstandings and hurt. But … really? A portrait in every room?

Darcy had her eyebrows raised, waiting for him to finish his picturing, then they looked at each other and Tony laughed. He laughed for a solid minute. Oh wow, oh man. He'd heard stories of Howard's ridiculous, wilder days, of course, but there was something so obnoxiously human about that. For the first time, he felt like he might almost have liked the guy his dad was when he was younger. 

"Thank you for that," Tony said, letting out a whoosh of breath as his laughter trailed off. "No really. That's amazing. That is, maybe, the best thing I've ever heard about dad, ever. Holy shit. I will never get over that. Amazing."

With a pat on his shoulder, she put her treasures aside. "You're welcome."

"Okay," he said, gathering himself to get back to work and wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. "More boxes. Next?"

After the first two, much more personal boxes, each remaining box seemed be in chronological order, year after year, marching through the decades. The third box they opened contained the files from 1946 and the promised work on Darcy's visit. Then it was a couple boxes of SSR files, and then it was SHIELD. There were operational files that were still probably highly classified, intelligence reports that were most certainly way beyond classified even if they were decades out of date, and a collection of personnel files with no obvious clue as to why Howard chose to archive them here. 

"I cannot believe he just left this stuff sitting here," Darcy groused, looking horrified at the lack of security. Tony groaned inwardly; his daughter was an uptight, government stooge. Where did he go wrong? 

"Well, obviously, it was safe," Tony said, trying to get her back on track. 

"But—"

"Keep opening," he ordered through gritted teeth. 

Halfway through the boxes, lunch arrived, and Tony tried to call a halt, but Darcy'd just opened another and was ignoring him in favor of flipping through a black, leather journal. Tony dropped their pizza on a desk and rejoined her. 

This one, unlike the previous dozen, was full of identical journals, but these at least were labeled with dates on the spine. Tony picked one up and opened it. The first entry, and every subsequent one, was addressed to Darcy, and at a quick glance contained Howard's personal thoughts and comments on SHIELD and its day to day operations. Though addressed to his granddaughter, the tone of the commentary suggested this wasn't just a journal, but a conversation with the future Director of the agency. 

"Hol _ee_ shit," Darcy breathed out and looked at the remaining boxes, her eyes wide and a little panicky.

"Guess Howard was serious about you being Director," Tony commented mildly, tossing the journal back in the box. "Break for lunch, kid. They're not going anywhere."

Darcy set her journal down gingerly, eyeing it warily, and followed Tony over to the desk. "Should I turn this over to Phil? I feel like maybe I should."

"Fuck no. These are yours. If you want to get all stuffy about protocol, just remember Howard was co-Director, and he gave them to you. So, like, that _is_ protocol. Or something." He shrugged and opened the pizza box while Darcy boosted herself up to sit on the desk. "However that shit works."

"I guess," she said sounding dubious. 

"Give Phil the files, if you feel like you have to. I mean, those, at least, are SHIELD property. But, the journals were for you," he told her, feeling firm about that. It seemed important that those stayed with her. 

That suggestion seemed to ease her conscience and she nodded. "Right."

"We can move this stuff back to the Tower," he offered. "Or even the secure archives under the mansion; nobody will get to them there."

"Good idea."

"I do have them. A lot, actually. People need to acknowledge that more often." He narrowed his eyes at her. "And by people, I mean you."

"Dad!" she gasped and gave him a wide-eyed look. "You're a genius! Oh my God! How have I never realized this?"

"Alright, smart ass. Eat." He shoved a coke and a paper plate with two slices of pizza at her. 

"You're going to have to give me a minute; I'm still stunned by the magnitude of this revelation!" She put her hand on her forehead, like she felt faint. "My father is a genius! A freaking, certified genius!"

"You know, you're not too old for me to ground," Tony warned. 

"Kinda am."

"I can repurpose my Iron Legion for house arrest," he assured her and reached for a packet of photographs. 

"Creepy, dad," she said with a laugh. 

Grumbling, he started sorting through pictures. Darcy in 1946. She was so damned beautiful, and the 40s looked good on her. There she was with Howard and Peggy Carter, a candid shot of them sitting in a library — looked like the mansion. That was surreal, like a strange, really good photoshopped image of today and yesterday. 

How much more surreal must it have been for her to be there? Poor kid. But, she was smiling, she looked happy. So did Howard; Tony was sure his dad never smiled at him like that. It was weird, that twinge of envy was still there, but it was overwhelmed by a sense of true relief. She hadn't been alone. She had dad, and he'd loved her. It was clear. Thank God. Oh, thank God. For the first time in years, he wanted to talk to Howard, just to say a few words, just to say 'thank you'. 

"When was this?" he asked.

Darcy cocked her head and thought for a second. "Thanksgiving. Jarvis was taking pictures all day. There's probably a hundred others in that stack."

He flipped through a few more pictures, a handful of candids, a few of the Howling Commandos making appearances, some formally staged ones. It definitely looked like Thanksgiving. "Looks like a good day."

"It wasn't bad," she agreed. "I missed you. I missed everybody. But, by that time, I had things I was thankful for, too."

"Chance like that doesn't ever happen, does it?" he said, staring at a photo of Edwin Jarvis giving Darcy an exasperated look while she laughed. He remembered that look. He smiled and shook his head. Darcy and Jarvis — that was pretty great, too. 

"No," she said. "I knew I'd have to say goodbye, but … but, you know, I got to say hello." Her voice wavered on the last word. 

Tony pressed his lips together and nodded. "Yeah," he said quietly. Darcy tried to discretely sniff back tears, and turned her attention to her pizza. Tony reached out and put a hand on her knee, squeezing gently. "I'm glad you got that."

"Me, too."

Tony turned back to the pictures, and flipped through them until another stopped him and he laughed. "Is that you and Dum Dum Dugan?" he asked, dropping a picture in front of her.

She glanced down and grinned. "Yeah. Angie took that one, that's why the top of his head's sort of cut off. It took her a while to get the hang of the camera. We went to Coney Island."

"Looks cold."

"Well, it was November. Most of the place was shut down, but we went down along the boardwalk. It was my birthday."

"Wait, wait, wait," Tony said, waving his coke in the air, "that means you're going to get two birthdays in one year? That's not fair. I'm not okay with that. How old does that make you?"

"Three months older? So would that mean we should move my birthday back to August?" She frowned as she thought about it. "No, wait, how the hell would that work?"

"I think you should just skip this year and start again next year," Tony said with a pragmatic shrug. 

"I'm not skipping my birthday. Besides, this is the year I come into my trust fund," she said with a bright smile.

Tony snorted and reached for another piece of pizza. "I'm pretty sure you've got a lot more in your accounts and investments now than what's in your trust fund."

"Still, though, mistress of my own destiny, at last," she said, throwing her arms wide and basking in the glow of her trust fund.

"I guess that does mean I can finally cut you off. You can quit stealing my card for your second-hand thrift store shopping sprees." He rolled his eyes and asked, exasperated, "You do know you're rich, right? I mean, seriously, what?"

"Grandpa Jim says you don't stay rich by wasting money," she told him with a pious nod. 

"But as a caring, disgustingly wealthy person, you should help put some of that money back in the economy," he argued back. "There are places out there begging for your business. They've got kids to feed, too, and mortgages to pay. Do your part for the economy, Darce."

"I'm buying property in Brooklyn! Like, stupidly expensive property. Which I then have to redevelop. And furnish and shit."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," he dismissed with a shake of his head. "So, speaking of, found anything yet?"

"Gloria showed me a place in Williamsburg yesterday that looks pretty good. Four buildings and a lot. The current owners started a development, they cleared a couple buildings already, but their financing collapsed. It's one of those sort of angular blocks up against the expressway off the bridge," she said, using her hands to give a rough idea of the shape. "It's stupidly, profoundly, absurdly expensive. Still, it's not bad. Plenty of room."

"We should go take a look at it. Tomorrow, maybe. We've still got a whole floor to go here."

Darcy gave him a sad look and let out a whimper. "So much."

"It's our legacy, Darce. Suck it up. Just wait 'till you see what I'm leaving you when I die."

"I've seen. I see every year when Pepper makes us do the inventory." Darcy shuddered and Tony grimaced. That wasn't a fun week. Ever. And Pepper accepted no excuses, short of a coma, for getting out of it. 

"Besides," Darcy continued, "you're not allowed to die."

Tony laughed. "Oh, really?"

"Really," she said with a sniff. 

"What if I fake my death and go live in Bora-Bora or something?"

Narrowing her eyes, she pointed a pizza crust at him threateningly. "I'll hunt you down."

He grinned at her. "Good to know, kid."

"Face it, dad, you're stuck with me." 

"No one I'd rather be stuck with."

She lightly kicked his arm and grinned. "Aww, you're getting all sappy."

"And you're getting—" His retort died on his lips when his eye caught a piece of paper sticking out of one of the envelopes of photos. He reached past her and slid it out.

"What?" Darcy snatched at the paper but he drew his hand away too quickly and gave her a taunting look. 

"I saw it first." There was a sketch of the ground floor of the building, and then a string of numbers next to, what looked like a beam or something in a back hallway that ran the length of the building. Tony scratched at his chin, turned the paper over, looking for something more, but those were the only markings. "Huh?"

Darcy's second attempt at the paper succeeded, but after a look over, she could only offer her own "huh" as well. 

"Let's look," he said, grabbing the paper back one more time and bouncing up out of the creaky old office chair. Darcy slid off the desk and followed after him. 

They found the back hall, then searched the area marked on the rough blue-print for a few minutes. Darcy ran searching fingers over the edges of the wall, while Tony focused his attention on a green-painted support beam. He found the panel on one side, his fingers catching on the edge. Peering down, he pried at the panel, but it wasn't until he pushed down from the top that it popped open revealing a keypad.

"Found it." 

Darcy stood behind him and watched as he entered the twenty-digit code. The wall in front of them slid back about a half inch then slid aside, opening to a small anti-chamber. 

"He left the paper in the pictures," Tony murmured.

"In the things only you and I would give a crap about," Darcy concluded. Exchanging a look, they stepped forward into the gray, concrete room and were presented with a choice of elevator doors, or a side door that looked like it led to a stairway. 

"Going down?" Tony asked with a smirk. 

Darcy gave him a sour look. "What in the hell did he do?"

"Got damned paranoid, I'd guess." Not knowing how far down this all went, Tony opted for the elevator. It looked sound. 

They rode down in silence, Tony trying to think through how and why, and Darcy fidgeted next to him. This was pretty overwhelming for him, how much more for her? 

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. It's just weird. You know, more weird. Because I need that in my life." She rubbed a hand across her forehead and started to say something but the elevator came to a stop and released them into a short hallway. There was a door to their left, and Darcy made a quick check, confirming it was for the stairs. Then at the end, the hall opened up into a large room. 

"Whoa," Darcy said as they walked through. "Okay, so, hello to the secret underground lair. Just what I always wanted."

Tony snickered and bumped her shoulder. "You actually did. I remember all your little forts in the workshop."

"I did that like twice, tops," she said with a sniff.

"Oh, no, it was way more than that," Tony argued back. "Tell me you remember the time you took over the whole workshop and garage for your weird little sheetmetal and duct tape secret lair."

She gave him a little glare but had to relent in the face of his amusement. "That was a pretty good one."

"Good? It was genius. It was a maze. God, you had traps for the bad guys in there, secret compartments, an armory of nerf guns, hidden doors. Of course, it took me a week to clean it up, but that was a-plus, ten-year old creativity. Also, that's what I got for leaving you alone for an afternoon with Happy." He stopped laughing and frowned. "Okay, so, I guess I should have seen the SHIELD agent thing coming."

She snorted a laugh and started looking around her real secret lair in ernest. There was the main room off the hall, and what looked like some smaller hallways off of that leading to smaller rooms or sections. The main room, itself was probably 700 square feet. Decent sized. Not much in the way of equipment, mostly office furniture. Four old, heavy, metal government issue desks, desk chairs, and desk lamps. A long console against the far wall, covered in buttons and switches, with an ancient CRT monitor mounted on top. Probably the controls for this facility. And next to that a line of filing cabinets. 

"Okay," Darcy said circling back around to him. "So, why'd he leave the files upstairs if he had the bunker here?"

Tony pursed his lips and thought. "Maybe he did this later and didn't get around to moving the files. Or he did this first and didn't get around to moving the files. Or, he wanted to make sure you saw those files right away for some reason. Maybe he figured it might take you a little while to find the paper." 

Darcy scratched at her chin and looked around the room, before heading to the back of the room and the door there with its frosted-glass panel. She opened it up and stuck her head through. "Another hallway," she reported. "More doors."

"I'd be willing to bet," Tony said, running his hand over a dust-covered desk, "the upstairs wasn't as easy to get into as we made it look." He glanced up at the duct works, and felt the fresh air from a nearby vent. It didn't smell stale down here, not closed off for years. Musty, sure, but this system had been running for decades. Low-power mode, but still active. He'd want to run over all the systems, upgrade everything. If his daughter had a secret lair, it was going to be the best. Plus, fun project. 

"What, like some sort of defense trigger if somebody tried to jimmy the lock?" she asked.

"I'd bet. The door was pretty heavy." Tony chewed on his mustache. Geez, dad. "The windows, too." He jerked his chin at the door she'd just looked through. "That runs under the back garage."

Darcy gave him a saccharine smile and clasped her hands. "Could I be so lucky, is there a secret exit, too?"

"You want to go explore, go explore. I want to check the upstairs security. Now I'm curious."

Darcy glanced around the room and walked back over to him, hooking her arm in his, and started them walking back to the elevator. "I can leave this for later, it's not going anywhere."

Once back on the main floor, Darcy walked along the front bay windows, eyeing them suspiciously. 

"Guess you found your SHIELD base," Tony said as he dug in her bag for the multimeter she promised him was in there. Of course she had a multimeter. God, he loved his kid. 

"Too small. I mean, it's nice as a backup, but Bucky—" she stopped at the other man's name and cast him a hesitant glance. "Too small."

He grimaced at the depths of her bag, but it wasn't the bag's fault. He couldn't stand that Barnes was this weird thing between them, and though this was never his strength, it was time to get all this out in the open.

"Dad knew something was up," he said quietly. "He was going to DC on that trip. I don't know what for, but he had a meeting at the Pentagon. I mean, that wasn't unusual, but the timing."

"Yeah, I understand," Darcy said.

"When we found out he and mom were murdered," Tony continued. "I figured it was either something he was working on, or he was getting too close to Hydra."

"Maybe both."

"Maybe." Tony shrugged and pulled the multimeter and a pocket electricians kit out of her bag. "Your bag is ridiculous, Darce."

"Ridiculously amazing, you mean," she corrected, smirking at him with that Stark arrogance he so readily recognized, and that made him so stupidly happy. It drove everybody else nuts, but nobody would ever doubt she was his. 

"Yeah, sure. I'm still wondering how you walk with this thing. Like is it going to give you shoulder problems later? Are you screwing up your spine? What's going on?"

"Dad," she sighed and shook her head. 

"Yeah, well, anyway. Dad knew something was up." Tony pointed a finger at the door. "Clearly. He was preparing for it. For you and, I guess probably for me, too. And, I know Barnes was just the weapon. I get it. I can't look at him, Darce. I can't. But, I know what Hydra does to people, so do you. And they did it to him." He blew out a breath. "God, how fucked up is that? Did they have him kill an old friend? Jesus. Does he remember that? Does he remember them fucking with his head and forcing him to do that sort of shit?"

Darcy tapped at a section of the window frame. "Wiring," she said, then moved to the next bay. "Yeah, he remembers. I don't know if he remembers all of it, or how he remembers, like if its details or just images. But he knows they made him do things." She tapped the next fame. "More wiring. You were right. And this looks like old glass, but up close, it's not glass at all. Transparent metal, maybe?"

"Yeah, maybe." Tony drummed his fingers on the kit in his hand. "I can't look at him, but if you keep doing this spy shit, going out there, I'm glad he's got your back. Anybody who can knock Cap on his ass, is nasty enough to keep you safe. He's a tough son of a bitch."

Snorting a laugh, Darcy said, "That's what Dugan always said about him."

Tony tried to let go of his distaste for Barnes; the man was revered for decades by his friends and comrades. And, hell, he had to trust Darcy on this. She knew people. She knew them so much better than he did. He had to trust her. 

"Yeah, so, anyway, dad," he said, getting them back to what he wanted to say. What he needed to get off his chest to her. This conversation was probably long overdue. "He was different when I knew him. Who knows why."

She bit her upper lip and her eyes darted away from him. "Maybe me."

"No, Darcy. No." Shaking his head firmly, he walked over to join her at the windows, looking for the wiring she pointed out. "He was older when he had me. 52, I think. Yeah, 52. Time changes people. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. I mean, really, who knows why we never got along. I sure as hell don't. He was just never really there. Wrapped up in business and all that crap, I guess."

"You were both a lot alike and a lot different," Darcy observed. "I had a hard time getting a read on him at first." 

"Well, that's saying something, you're usually pretty quick with people," Tony said. 

She smirked at him and lifted one eyebrow, teasing and light. "Well, the over-the-top arrogance and bravado were pretty easy."

"Funny," he grunted sourly. 

"But the subtler stuff was trickier," she continued in a more serious tone. "It was hard for me to figure out how he was going to react to some things. I kept sort of expecting him to react like you, and he didn't." 

"Huh. Okay. But, I'm just going to say this; don't think for a second any of what Howard was is on you. Because, it's not. Geez kid, it was decades. It's just time, you know, it's just time. He was who he was and he made his own choices." He rapped a knuckle on the not-glass window. Yep, metal. Transparent aluminum maybe? That would make sense. "I'm glad you got to know him. Seriously. I used to wonder, you know, what he'd think of you. If he'd love you, or if he'd be like he was with me. Peggy always told me he'd adore you. I guess she knew, huh?"

Darcy's lips lifted up into a soft, sad smile. "She knew."

"Good. Good."

"You know, he loved you, too, dad."

"I know."

"Do you?" she pressed with a frown. 

"Yeah. I don't remember him ever telling me that, but I don't know if I ever told him, either. I wish … well, whatever. Doesn't matter now." He braced his hand against the window frame and stared blankly at the rough old wood.

Darcy leaned back against the windows and looked around the garage. "How'd they keep it clean? Right? They had cleaning crews in. I can smell it. And there's not a lot of dust. If it was all secure, how is this cleaned? And again with the boxes just sitting there."

Tony felt his lips quirk up in a smile, and he turned his head to regard his beautiful, amazing daughter who somehow always knew. He pushed off the frame and straightened his back. Dad was thinking of them the whole time. Whatever else, he took care of both of them as well as he could. "We'll have to ask V what the protocols were for the cleaners. Check those papers you got, see who Leo hired. Probably supervised cleaning. And I think we're going to have to track down the security in this place before we risk moving anything sensitive."

"Booby traps?" Darcy laughed and shook her head. "Oh Howard."

"Asshole, am I right?" Tony's smile grew to a grin and he nodded back at her.

"Manic as fuck," she told him emphatically, grinning back. 

"God, he really was." Tony picked at the conduit hiding the wiring for the windows. "Tell me about him. What was he like? You know, before he got all crusty."

Darcy waggled her eyebrows at him and grabbed up her bag, starting to dig out an absurd array of tools and parts. "He tried to hit on me when we first met. It was gross."

"Okay, yeah, don't tell me about that." Tony shuddered. "Other things. How'd he buy your story?"

She snorted. "Peggy was the tougher sell. But I think what really did it were my glasses."

"Oh, yeah, plastics. Good eye, dad." He nodded approvingly and opened up the conduit. "See if you can find the junction."

"Got it."

"So what else?"

Darcy smiled and told him. They spent the afternoon tracking down Howard's surprisingly subtle and wickedly nasty security, and talking about the man. And for the first time, they had a conversation about his dad that wasn't shaded by the ghosts of Tony's history. There were new colors to him, new aspects, and though Tony's grief lingered, it was lighter than it had ever been. Peggy told him once his daughter would heal some of those wounds. Now he knew what she meant. 

It took a trip to the past to allow them both to move out of that past, out of Howard's shadow. Tony would help Darcy work through her experience, but now they could both move forward into the future they would make. Building on Howard's legacy to shape their own. As he looked at his daughter, he saw his own future in the brilliant woman he'd given to the world. He'd worn a lot of titles, been called a lot of things, but the name he was most proud of was 'dad'. 

Maybe he _would_ be strong enough if he went to the past, because he knew he wouldn't, couldn't change a thing, not a single thing, because every piece, every step of it led to her. Everything was worth it for her. _Everything_.


End file.
